[Petit Fours #439] On imagination, (ir)relevance, and friction
Good morning from Aarhus, Denmark! I’m here all week for the sixth decennial conference. Here’s what I’ve got for you today:
#1 Tomorrow, we will host a workshop on Data/Work in Crisis. One of the things I’ve done in preparation is to read Minna Ruckenstein and Tuukka Lehtiniemi’s new article on Friction and Promise in Data Labor which “develops friction as a methodological lens and mobilizes it to examine an unusual data labor arrangement in Finnish prisons.“
#2 Later in the week, we will discuss our critique, Nordic Perspectives on Algorithmic Systems: Cards as a Playful Intervention into the Crisis of Imagination, and fellow participants can also try out the card box during the demo session. As a reminder, the card box materials are freely available online, too.
#3 For something completely different, I look forward to reading this article by Damien Rudaz which, from a glance, seems to offer both conceptual and methodological insight into debates about conversational agents: The (Ir)relevance of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis for Technology Companies: Incommensurability in Action.
#4 On the train yesterday, I treated myself to all 27 pages of the 2025 edition of Haoqi Zhang’s annual DTR letter. I love the pedagogical sentiment that the person always goes first, and nothing good gets overlooked. This seems to underlie the whole the Design, Technology, and Research (DTR) course. “We are who we are, and we do what we do. Seasons change. We carry on.”
-A